Diana Kelly Levey

10 Ways to Burn More Fat During Your Workout

September 3, 2015 | Categories:

While some of us are exercising because it’s good for our overall health, many of us want to build lean muscle and/or shed fat at the same time. If whittling away fat is one of your goals, you need to push hard during your workouts, says New York City-based certified personal trainer, Melissa Paris. Here are her 10 expert fitness tips on how to stoke your metabolism and burn more fat during your workouts.

1. Put Your Phone Away
Unless you’re using it to reference a workout or proper form, turn off notifications so you’re not distracted by texts, Twitter mentions, Facebook updates, and things that aren’t crucial to your workout. Paris tells her clients to give their workout the full attention it deserves for 45 minutes to an hour to maximize their fat-burning potential.

2. Eat Before You Exercise
If you’re not fueled up properly, you’ll be less likely to give your workout everything you’ve got. Have a fast-digesting carb like a piece of fruit at least 30 minutes before exercising to give your workout momentum, suggests Paris.

3. Keep Breaks Short
When Paris is training her clients she only allows for short breaks between movements (10 to 30 seconds) so their heart rates stay high which is the key to burning fat.

4. Practice AMRAPs

Doing “as many rounds (or reps) as possible” is an excellent way to keep your heart rate near it’s max and ignite your body’s fat-burning furnace for longer. Do this with sprints, plyometric exercises, burpees, box jumps, pull-ups, and more.

5.  Try Supersets

Paris will have her clients do several exercises back to back so that they’re challenging muscles while keeping heart rates high. For example, she might have clients move from a push-up and chest press back-to-back for a few repetitions until they’ve completed a set. Then they’ll rest for about a minute (or less) and go again.

6. Make It A Timed Goal

When Paris tells her clients to do a specific number of sit-ups, pushups, squats, jumps, or burpees in a certain amount of time (like 30 reps in 45 seconds), they’re more likely to push themselves and hit the goal than if they do “as many as they can” for 45 seconds.

7. Incorporate HIIT

“I love HIIT (high-intensity interval training), because there are brief rest periods and you get more out of your 45 to 60-minute workouts, burning more calories and fat,” says Paris. Here are just a few HIIT workouts you can try to get started.

8. Change It Up

Using different equipment means you’re varying the movement and challenging your body while building endurance and stamina. For example, doing a triceps or biceps exercise will work muscles in new ways if you use a kettlebell instead of a dumbbell, and abs exercises will feel different if you add a medicine ball or weight plate to the mix. Paris also loves battle ropes for keeping the heart rate high while working your entire upper body, and TRX suspension training for a total-body workout that challenges your core with every movement.

9. Go Old School With A Jump Rope

You may not have done this since your schoolyard days, but there’s a reason boxers and fighters jump rope when training. It’s an effective, challenging cardio workout (seriously, jump rope as fast as you can for a few minutes and let us know how you feel). You’ll be burning fat (and probably sweating buckets) while jumping, plus, it’s fun and can be done anywhere, any time.

10. Give Yourself a Rest Day

If you’re really doing four to five hard workouts each week (the ones that burn fat), it’s necessary to take a day off every now and again. Your muscles need to repair themselves with rest, sleep, and proper nutrition. “If you don’t take a break, you’re more likely to get injured if you’re not functioning at full capacity,” says Paris. “Sometimes you have to pull back to go forward.”

Read the original article on FitnessRepublic.com.

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